On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Tomas Vondra <tv@fuzzy.cz> wrote:
>>>> Well, this is sort of one of the problems with work_mem. When we
>>>> switch to a tape sort, or a tape-based materialize, we're probably far
>>>> from out of memory. But trying to set work_mem to the amount of
>>>> memory we have can easily result in a memory overrun if a load spike
>>>> causes lots of people to do it all at the same time. So we have to
>>>> set work_mem conservatively, but then the costing doesn't really come
>>>> out right. We could add some more costing parameters to try to model
>>>> this, but it's not obvious how to get it right.
>>>
>>> Ummm, I don't think that's what I proposed. What I had in mind was a
>>> flag "the batches are likely to stay in page cache". Because when it is
>>> likely, batching is probably faster (compared to increased load factor).
>>
>> How will you know whether to set the flag?
>
> I don't know. I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not suggesting
> messing with work_mem (increasing it or whatewer). Or maybe I got your
> comments about memory overrun etc. wrong - now that I read it again,
> maybe it's meant just as an example of how difficult problem it is?
More or less, yeah.
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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